Never good at mathematics, I understand there are things out there called ‘algorithms’ which keep people away from my blog at about the same rate they drive the horde to ogle, for example, Sophie Monk’s boobs. I’ve never met Sophie Monk, but I think ‘Sophie Monk’ is just the sort of name a celebrity wannabe might have, here in Australia, where celebrity-dom is bequeathed seemingly at random. Especially if you are a nobody with boobs. Exhibit one:
This paragraph has nothing to do with Sophie Monk’s boobs, per se, but humour me while I conduct a little experiment. Clare Werbeloff was a bona fide Australian nobody who in 2009 falsely claimed to have witnessed the King’s Cross shooting of a ‘skinny wog’ by a ‘fat wog’ and who basked in the public eye much longer than anyone predicted. It included a nude cover on a now-defunct men’s magazine, a co-hosting gig in a now-defunct commercial television show, and talk of a (now-defunct) recording deal. Ah well, at least she had a crack, as we say in Oz, and boobs!
Point being, like the Kardashians, she unfairly appropriated more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame; in fact, for the better part of two years, the ‘Chk Chk Boom Girl’ had the entire nation cringing, with many of us wondering how being an audacious liar and misleading the police didn’t see her on the pointy end of an appropriate comeuppance. Luckily she’s gone now, because back in the noughties there was only one Clare Werbeloff to chase back into the woods with torch and pitchfork — now, though, oh how times have changed.
I get my social media fix by writing this blog, so I dutifully read other bloggers’ efforts and, if genuinely impressed, will like a post. But that’s it. I refuse to encourage the spread of this awful malaise, the craving to be ‘somebody’ online. A weakly-investigative article by Rosie Gizauskas on Broadly examines what motivates people to create fake celebrities profiles online. She concludes the infection is caused by and spread through loneliness and boredom. Which is a bit meh. Tell us bored losers something we don’t already know! I liked it better when I didn’t know how much fun other people are pretending to have.
Quoting a social psychologist for added gravitas, Gizauskas notes that ‘parody’ and ‘imitation’ profiles, though in violation of the rules, are broadly tolerated by most platforms, and her sympathetic conclusion is that “You could be a 45-year-old housewife who’s bored to death but pretend to be Justin Bieber in your spare time. It’s an escape.” Actually, death would be preferable. We prattle-on about drug-resistant diseases, yet here’s evidence of a plague well beyond the reach of modern science! Can you imagine a life so bleak that you’d become a Bieber doppelgänger? The poor fictitious housewife in question would have been better off pretending to be Sophie Monk + boobs. Mostly because you’d get away with more spelling and grammatical errors in your tweets.
(While I’m a bit revolted by the idea, as an artistic challenge I’ll write my next poem from the perspective of a well-known actor. If I’m any good you’ll pick it instantly.)
Yay, Sophie! Your boobs will lead us to victory!
Anyhoo, apparently Sophie and her chesticles feature prominently on some show involving fake matchmaking among a bunch of fake singles who have spent their nude-cover advances on cosmetic alterations to look more like Sophie Monk’s heavily amended body or her male equivalent, whoever that might be. I honestly can’t say because I honestly don’t care. Somebody who adds no value to anything in the world but looks good doing it.